Dreamworld Report #6 – the end of the West US tour – across the plains to Minneapolis

First up a little more Boise – I went to a drum session Failla was leading. It was great to see how effectively she engages everyone with their percussion, encouraging each person to lead at times and support at other times, to listen to each other and complement each other’s playing. A great lesson for everything else in life.

I played a show in Pocatello Idaho and an open mic in Bozeman Montana (where I stayed with the son of one of the great early member-organizers of the Dane County TimeBank, the gift that keeps on giving…) then headed to Bismarck North Dakota. There I played at a new micro-brewery which I really enjoyed. Even more, I enjoyed that the owner of the place was very curious about the cooperative economic stuff I mentioned onstage. We had a great discussion about it the next day and he said ‘when you come back here to play again we may have this going’ – I really hope so! and will help however I can, of course.

Same thing happened at the next show in Aberdeen South Dakota. I played at the Red Rooster Coffeehouse, another really cool venue – used bookstore, coffeehouse, community hub, and freeconomy freestore – where the owner also runs a non-profit organization dedicated to inclusive arts. Many of the things they do fit very well with timebanking and he’ll be exploring it further.

From there I headed to Duluth for another show and a friend’s wedding where I met more people who are interested in incorporating timebanking into their work.

And wrapped up this leg of the tour with a lovely day in Minneapolis. Liane Gale, whom I’d met at the Economic Democracy Conference last October and got to know more at the Charles Eisenstein and Bernard Lietaer/Jacqui Dunne events we hosted – she traveled from Minneapolis for all of them – organized a really great Local Economy Summit. Attending were several people from the Green Party, reps from Hour Dollars and NE Time Traders, a mayoral candidate, green energy and urban ag folks, and people interested in redesigning work. We discussed people’s interests and initiatives, played the timebank web game, discussed applying timebanking and other economic tools to projects and the ecosystem modeling that can help guide us, and established a few next steps.

Now I’m home again. It’s great to be here! I’ll be working on writing, getting our proposal sent out, updating and fleshing out posts, papers, presentations, etc. And editing some video to make a report from the road – I’ll be showing some of it at our Dane County TimeBank Rock n Roll Party September 8. And working on the next leg of the tour, starting Sept. 20 in Chicago, working east with a detour to Istanbul (and possibly beyond) in October, ending up in New Orleans and then St. Louis where it all began – with the first Service Credit Exchange (that I know of and of course this kind of thing has been done throughout human history) in the Grace Hill Settlement House.

And, a little more news – we’ve secured a $10,000 contribution which will unlock $10K of our $20K challenge grant. You can help us with that next chunk by donating here: http://www.razoo.com/story/Sharing-Economy-Tour

You’ll get a download of my album Dreamworld with your donation, and better yet will help make these tours work. There’s a lot to be done to follow up properly, including building software tools and making video and training materials. Help us maximize our abilities!!

As always, thanks for reading. Please pass it on if you know people who might be interested. And subscribe if you’d like to receive these in your email.

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